This 100 000 m² project for Paris's new High Court
works as a vertical and compact district, criss-crossed by a network of
suspended hallways. These halls unfold above an existing industrial hangar.
They are a replica of the three naves that form together, so as to articulate
the various flows of users: magistrates, the public, and accused people. These
passages include large common spaces and provide the visual bearings necessary
to find one’s way in such a large building. They are carved out of the massive
volume of the building, which defines the court of justice more as an absence
of building than a building as such. They make the overall infrastructure
function as a horizontal tower with expansive floors on every level, while
allowing light into the circulation cores and a systematic division of levels
into compartments. Inside each pole, civil and penal, secondary relationships
are created through a series of escalators following the principle of
“free-form section.”
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